


The Light Cracking Through

by mggislife2789



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Children, F/M, Heavy Angst, Kidnapping, Psychological Torture, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-18 09:52:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14210541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mggislife2789/pseuds/mggislife2789
Summary: Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters or their original stories. This is only for fun. It's where my brain goes after the credits roll. No copyright intended. Better safe than sorry. ;)





	1. Chapter 1

“I’m in labor. Spence, we’re having a baby.”

That was the last time he smiled. 

As he pushed up off the floor, the metal clashed around his wrists. He could feel the grime covering his hands, his face, and just that little bit of sunlight that peeked through the blinds on the small window he could see from across the room. 

Swallowing hard, he turned to the side to see the water bottle she’d left for him, as well as breakfast. Three months. After that amount of time, he knew she didn’t want to kill him. She wanted to break him down. Mold him back in her own imagine - all for her. But he wasn’t about to be broken down, no matter how demoralized he felt. 

Taking a swig of the water, he hissed against the cold. It felt good to take a sip of something clean after inhaling the dust of what he could only assume was a basement all night long. “They aren’t going to find you,” she cooed, her voice sending snakelike shivers up his spine. “It’s not like I’ve ever been on anyone’s radar. Just give yourself to me, Spencer Reid.”

Close every door to me  
Hide all the world from me  
Bar all the windows  
And shut out the light  
Do what you want with me  
Hate me and laugh at me  
Darken my daytime  
And torture my night

“No,” he said as emphatically as he could. For months he’d been screaming and when he wasn’t screaming he was trying not to give this woman what she wanted - his time. “You took me from my wife. My child. That’s unforgivable.” Whoever this woman was, she knew how to push his buttons. Pain was one thing, but the psychological torture of being ripped from your child before you even had the chance to meet knowing that as each day passed you weren’t there to see them grow? That was a different kind of torture entirely. And it was what she was relying on to break him. “Go to hell.”

His eyes closed against the light that streamed in when she opened the door. Her hair was long and wavy, makeup done, well-dressed - not what he’d expected when he first saw her. She crouched down in front of him. “I’m already there. But having you by side will make this hell all the more tolerable.”

“I’ll never be with you.” The thought made him sick. He hadn’t seen Y/N’s face in months - only in his dreams. The tears burned against his eyelids as he thought about his baby. He didn’t know whether or not it was a girl or a boy. Did they look like him? Like Y/N? What did they sound like when they cried? “I’ll die here before I let you in.”

“That’s what you think,” she replied as she stood up to walk away. 

“What do you want? Why are you doing this?!” He screamed, sputtering when the words got caught in his throat. 

“I’ve lost everything. This is my new beginning.” She sighed happily. It was like this was cleansing for her. There was truth in her words.

Close every door to me  
Keep those I love from me  
Children of Israel  
Are never alone  
For I know I shall find  
My own peace of mind  
For I have been promised  
A land of my own

Each day that passed left him closer and closer to death. He was fed. He had water. But there was this overwhelming urge to let go, stop eating, do something to himself to stop this pain. But he couldn’t. Every time the thought entered his mind, Y/N’s face came to light, begging him not to, begging him to hold on so he could come home and meet their child. 

Keeping the light in was difficult. Letting the darkness take over would be so easy to do, but whenever he wanted to he reminded himself of one thing - she had taken him instead of his wife and child. There was no way he would’ve been able to live with himself had it not worked out the way it did. 

His first and foremost wish was that he would get out of here, but if that wasn’t to be, then for all that was good in the world, Spencer prayed Y/N and his baby would never see him again - if they did, he’d lose all hope. For his own peace of mind, keep them away.

This was his place now - fighting day by day against the insanity inside these four walls. As his eyes got heavy once again, he whispered to himself. “Just leave them be…just leave them be…please.”


	2. Colors Faded Into Darkness (Sad Ending)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song is Any Dream Will Do from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The writer in me wanted to write a sad ending. If you want a happy ending, the reader is me did that also, so go to Drew Back The Curtain for happy feels. :D

I closed my eyes,  
Drew back the curtain,  
To see for certain,  
What I thought I knew.

No.

No.

No.

This wasn’t happening.

He closed his eyes again - so hard he swore he’d tear through his eyelids. This couldn’t be happening. He must’ve been hallucinating. She couldn’t be here. That would mean that woman had touched her, scared her - his beautiful wife. No.

Squinting, he opened his eyes to see the outlines of her face, her bright eyes dimmed by fear staring back at him. “You can’t be hear,” he breathed. “This isn’t real. You’re not here.” Each word felt dry in his throat.

Over and over again, he shut his eyes, harder and harder in an attempt to wake him from this nightmare. She couldn’t be here. He couldn’t do anything to save her. The chains were still digging into his wrists and ankles. “Baby, it’s me.”

Her voice was far too calm. It wasn’t her.

“It’s not you. It’s not you.” He breathed steadily, keeping his eyes closed and willing himself back to sleep for when he woke up she would be safe and far away from here.

\---

When he opened his eyes again to the reflective tray holding one of his daily meals, he smiled to himself. She wasn’t here. It had all been a hallucination. “Good afternoon, dear.” That voice ran like ice through his veins. “You look so pale. If you’d just accept your future, I could feed you more. Get you stronger. Back to your old self.”

She unbuckled his shackles, knowing he couldn’t move well enough to escape, before returning to the top of the stairs. At first, he assumed this was like any other day in this hellhole. She brought him his food and left, but this time was different. When she descended once more, another pair of feet joined her.

His heart dropped.

“Baby!” Y/N cried, stopped from approaching him by the gun at her head. “Spence, oh my god!”

“Where’s the baby?” He croaked.

“With Emily. She’s safe. I promise. This one cornered me coming out of the grocery store.”

This wasn’t like before. This was real.

“Now,” the woman cooed, snaking the gun through the back of Y/N’s hair. “You have only one choice here Spencer Reid. Give yourself to me and I let her go. She gets to go home to your baby and you stay here with me. Or, you refuse, I kill her where she stands, and then I go grab that little girl of yours. You’re with me anyway and we raise her as our own. It’s your decision.”

Spencer felt the fire course through his veins. 

“Baby, don’t do it. She’s lying. The team is going to know I’m gone soon. They’re on high alert. And you know Emily will die before she lets anything happen to our little girl.”

This was it. 

The team was coming. His beautiful wife was right about that. But this woman wasn’t about to let him leave without hurting him in some way. He could see it in her eyes. Y/N was going to die if he didn’t do something. Now.

Slowly, he pushed back against the wall and moved upward, his legs shaking with the pressure of trying to keep himself standing. “That’s right,” she said coolly. “Just do as I say and she leaves here unharmed.”

He stumbled over to her, giving a desperate plea to his captor. “Let me kiss her goodbye. Please.”

“Fine.”

His chapped lips pressed against hers. There was no guarantee he’d be able to do this again. “I love you, Y/N. More than anything in this world.”

With that, he used every last ounce of strength to knock the woman into the wall. “Run!”

“Spence!” Her screech would haunt him for the rest of his life. “No!”

“RUN!” He screamed. The taste of copper filled his mouth and when he looked down, he felt the blood pool in his hands.

The woman was flailing, desperate - this wasn’t what she had planned on doing. She’d never wanted to kill him. Only to mold him in her image. Much to Spencer’s dismay, Y/N’s image still loomed in his vision. She knocked the woman over and into the wall once more, watching as the gun fell to the floor and slid toward her. Without hesitation, someone bent down and he heard a loud bang. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“Baby!”

Thank god.

“Y/N?”

“She’s gone. I shot her. Stay with me, okay? Emily knows I went missing. Garcia is tracking my phone.” She pushed down on his stomach, sobbing and screaming for him to stay alive as the crimson liquid slipped through her fingers. “Stay with me. Please. This is almost over.”

It was. But not in the way she hoped for. “Tell me about our baby.”

“She’s beautiful,” Y/N cried. “You need to stay alive for her. She has perfect rosy cheeks. Your eyes, your lips, my head of hair. She’s so gorgeous, Spence. She’s starting to coo now. I can’t wait for you to meet her. Please stay with me.”

He felt his own pulse. It was thready. “What’s her name?”

“Hope,” she wept. “Her name is Hope and she needs you.”

The sound of footsteps approached from behind them. As his vision faded, he could see the outlines of his loved ones. JJ, Emily, Derek, Hotch, Rossi. “Where is Garcia?”

“She has Hope,” Emily replied, her eyes awash with tears. “You’re safe now, Spencer.”

His breaths came in slowly and steadily, but he could feel his body weakening. Despite it all, this had been his brightest moment in months. “Tell Hope I love her okay? That Daddy never wanted to leave her? Please, she needs to know how much I loved her.”

“Stay with me!” Y/N cried. “The medics are here.”

But as the people he loved were pushed back to make way for the medics, their faces and everything around him started to fade. The colors drained - his hand no longer stained red, but a very dull gray. 

“You’re losing him! Please! Help him!” He heard in the distance. It wouldn’t be long now, but the loves of his life were safe. That was all he needed.

A crash of drums,  
A flash of light,  
My golden coat,  
Flew out of sight,  
Colors faded into darkness,  
I was left alone.


	3. Drew Back the Curtain (Happy Ending)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song is Any Dream Will Do from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The reader in me needed to write a happy ending, so that's this one. Go to Colors Faded Into Darkness for a sad and angsty ending.

Rosy cheeks. Bright brown eyes. Y/N’s hair. His lips. 

As Spencer sat on the floor of the dirty basement into his third month inside this living hell, he fought against the urge to open his eyes. He should be looking around, trying to find something that might help get him out of here, but in the dimness of his eyelids, he could picture his baby’s face. The light shining against Y/N’s hair. The warmth in her smile. If he opened his eyes, that all went away.

The clanging of his breakfast upon the morning tray jarred him out of the beautiful picture he’d created in his head. “Good morning, sunshine,” she breathed softly, her voice light and airy as if it somehow negated the hell he’d been living and the dirt he’d been breathing into his lungs day in and day out. 

After so many days of this, her voice faded to the background. He knew she was speaking, but she was no one. He was alone - only the pictures in his head to keep him from losing touch with the world.

A crash of drums,  
A flash of light,  
My golden coat,  
Flew out of sight,  
Colors faded into darkness,  
I was left alone.

He was so tired. It was so hard to hang on. 

More than anything, he wanted to allow himself to give up. The pain was overwhelming. 

His breaths became more and more shallow.

Suddenly, he heard a sound he hadn’t in months. A crashing door. Followed by the voice of the only person he knew that could kick down a door. “FBI, put down your weapon! Kid? Kid, are you here?!”

Immediately after stepping into the house, Hotch placed the unsub in cuffs as she screamed and cried, her pleas slipping into silence as she was taken to the squad car. 

“Spence, it’s me! Can you hear me?” JJ called.

For months, the only person who’d come down those stairs had been her, but as he started to faint, he saw the angelic, golden waves of one of his best friends. He tried to speak, but nothing came out, and then he heard nothing.

\---

I closed my eyes,  
Drew back the curtain,  
To see for certain,  
What I thought I knew.

Rosy cheeks. Bright brown eyes. Y/N’s hair. His lips. 

He had to keep his eyes closed. If he opened them again, he’d realize everything was a dream and it would break him.

“Spence?” A soft voice emerged from the silence. “Spencer? It’s me…” She started to cry. “Spencer, it’s Y/N. You’re in the hospital.”

It’s not real. It couldn’t be real. That wasn’t his life anymore. “You can’t fool me,” he mumbled, his lip quivering as the tears started to fall.

“Spence, this is real,” she sobbed. Her gasping cry caused him to open his eyes. “Baby, it’s me.”

“Am I dead?”

“No, Spence. You’re alive and you’re here with me. It’s gonna be okay.”

It took a few moments of staring at her, taking in the lines of her face, the bags under her eyes, the smoothness of her skin under the hesitant touch of his fingertips. “Y/N? I’m alive?”

A sob ripped through her again. Her head fell forward into his shoulder. “Yes. It’s over.”

“The baby?” He asked, sitting up and wincing through the pain. “You were in labor when I was taken. Where is the baby? What happened?” His biggest fear had been getting out and realizing that the baby didn’t make it, and her hesitancy nearly gave him a heart attack. 

Walking outside the room, she took the little girl from her Aunt Penelope and came back inside. “She’s here. And she’s perfect.”

Spencer started breathing frantically, the beeping of the machine picking up pace before she placed the baby in his arms. She had Y/N’s hair. His lips. Rosy cheeks. And bright brown eyes. “Hello beautiful.”

The little girl smiled at him, causing him to cry even harder. “She’s so amazing. Is she healthy? Everything’s okay? What happened during labor? I’m so sorry. I wasn’t there.”

A tear fell onto the baby’s hand and she reached for him. “She’s perfectly healthy,” Y/N said, smiling through the tears. “We’re both okay. Labor was hell, but I’m alive and so is she and we’re both healthy. Okay? You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Looking down at the little bundle, it suddenly dawned on him. “What’s her name?”

“Hope.” 

It took them nearly 10 minutes to stop sobbing. “When I woke up after she was born, they asked me what I wanted to name her. It was shortly after the team told me what happened and that they would never stop looking for you, so I needed to have hope. It just clicked when I looked at her.”

“Hope,” he said quietly, reveling in the feeling of five tiny fingers wrapped around his thumb. “Hello, Hope. You’re even more beautiful than I’d imagined.”


End file.
